The painting was a forgery, painted only a few months before. Bredius had no doubts he declared the painting the masterpiece of Vermeer, his best work ever. Shortly afterward, Bredius was approached by a lawyer, who sought his opinion on a newly discovered painting called Christ at Emmaus, which was thought to be a Vermeer.

Bredius was highly effective at spotting fake paintings, and in 1937, he published a book identifying 200 paintings incorrectly attributed to Rembrandt. Bredius was a Dutch art collector and historian who was well established as an expert on the paintings of Johannes Vermeer indeed, Bredius made his name in the 1880s by identifying works wrongly credited to Vermeer. In the Cautionary Tales episode “ The Art Forger, the Nazi, and the Pope,” Harford tells us the story of Abraham Bredius. Given the increased prevalence of data-derived and -informed approaches in sport, its publication could not have been timelier.

Harford does this through a number of key rules that, while designed for the real world, can be highly applicable to us in sport. In this book, he strives to give us the confidence to use the information we gather to accurately scrutinize the world around us and make better decisions, while also escaping the flawed logic, cognitive biases, and emotions that poison our ability to think clearly. This is fine if we have the time and expertise to thoroughly vet the data we’re working with, but in today’s time-poor world, we’re often so rushed that we don’t have time to think-and unfortunately, critical thinking skills are in short supply.įortunately for us, Tim Harford of Undercover Economist and Cautionary Tales fame has written The Data Detective (published in Europe as How to Make the World Add Up). As outlined in the now classic How to Lie with Statistics, we can often manipulate the numbers to support whichever message we desire. There is a dangerous flip side to this, however. Being data-informed ( as opposed to data-driven) often means that we can make better decisions, which in turn means that the athletes we work with perform better.

Coaches and support staff using published (or even unpublished) research to guide their decisions.

Coaches and practitioners collecting and analyzing data to inform their decision-making processes.

There is an ever-increasing use of-and reliance on-data within sport.

The data detective book